1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to fastening devices, and in particular the invention is related to a safety latch for securing a drawer or a door of a cabinet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Dangerous or poisonous materials such as medicines and cleaning agents are commonly stored in drawers and cabinets which are within convenient reach of children as well as adults. Various safety latches have been proposed for safeguarding the drawers and cabinet doors to prevent entry or access by children. The following patents are representative of prior art approaches to solving this problem: U.S. Pat. No. 3,381,992 to Friesen; U.S. Pat. No. 3,397,001 to Friedman; U.S. Pat. No. 3,879,072 to Tuley; and, U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,992 to Shelton. In the approach suggested by Friesen, a fastener is provided which includes a resilient latch member having a plurality of detent notches and a pin which cooperate to prevent more than partial opening of the drawer or door and must be manipulated to obtain complete release. A similar arrangement is disclosed by Friedman in which the latch and pin are serrated to provide positive latching action. A slightly different structure which requires additional manipulation is disclosed by Tuley in which a guide member having wide and narrow slots is engaged by a pin having a corresponding narrow diameter and wide diameter. In this arrangement, the wide diameter portion of the pin travels along the wide portion of the slot until the narrow slotted portion is reached. At that point the guide must be depressed to permit the narrow diameter portion of the pin to travel along the corresponding narrow slotted portion of the guide. Yet another approach is suggested by Shelton in which a curved resilient bifurcated stop cooperates with a resilient arm having a spherical latching lug for engaging the bifurcated stop. In this arrangement additional manipulation is also required to release the latching lug from the bifurcated stop.
A common feature of the prior art approaches described above is that each requires a separate manipulating step during its operation to permit access or entry into a compartment closed by a drawer or door. These approaches are founded upon the assumption that a toddler or child lacks the intelligence or muscular coordination required to perform the release manipulation steps. In view of the wide variation in the natural ability of children and their ability to learn by observing the actions of adults, that assumption would appear to be valid for only a relatively small number of children. Thus there remains considerable interest in providing a latch assembly having a child safety protective feature which operates independently of a child's learning ability or muscular coordination development level.